Political Quotes

“This is an issue that has grown and grown and grown. But let me say that I would agree with the gentleman from Michigan, that we do not want the Asian carp to be able to get into the Great Lakes and into Lake Michigan first. We have been working on this issue for 12 years and it really makes me upset to think that they seem to say, well, nothing has happened, and now it's an emergency, that the Asian carp are going to get into Lake Michigan. Let me tell you that we have set up two electronic dispersal barriers that are in my district to stop the Asian carp from getting through. This is the only path from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes and these two barriers are there. The Asian carp are 42 miles from the city of Chicago, and this is an emergency and they have 42 miles to go. They have moved very slowly. Most of the population of the Asian carp are in the Illinois River around Channahon and right now, Channahon, they have a contract with China to send the Asian carp over to be used as food in China. The Army Corps of Engineers has been doing everything, and this is for the last 12 years, and the Congress has funded this, to make sure that those Asian carp never reach the Great Lakes. And if they do, it would be devastating. So things that have happened, the two dispersal barriers, the bubble barriers, electro-fishing, oxygenation, rotenone used to kill the fish, the bypass screening barriers to combat the Asian carp.”